Here’s a picture I snapped from the front end of the front room of Accordion City’s notorious watering hole, the Bovine Sex Club. While the picture won’t win any photography awards, I think it captures the chatty vibe the bar had going between band sets.
Gord Gower, former president/co-founder of my first workplace, Mackerel
Interactive Multimedia, is a former Accordion City resident who now
lives in my favourite American metropolis, New York City. He says he
plans to write his impressions about all the going-on in the Big Apple
as the Republican National Convention rolls into town and has given me
permission to re-post them here. Here’s his first installment:
It would appear that the organizers of the RNC see it more important
that they get a side stage erected on the grounds of the Herald Square
parquette, than allowing myself and maybe 25 or 30 plain old folks get
their morning post subway breather. The nerve, I mean just what are
these folks bring to my city anyhow. I mean beyond a few million dollar
boost to a sagging midtown economy, and a bit of down home Texas style
patriotism, what’s in it for me?
I guess I will enjoy the thrill of seeing 250,000 dreadlocked black
bandana wearing a-holes make jack asses of themselves as they search
for a place to protest; AND I guess I will enjoy seeing 10,000 cops,
secret service and special forces bring the countries busiest business
district to a grinding halt… Down here the issue is more of what we
really DON’T want to see. My five friends who work down and around here
and I will just leave that one un-mentioned as per usual.
OK, honestly, I am a giddy as a school girl the night before seeing
Brad on the first day back to school. While everyone I work with is
shuffling about all grumpy like, cursing this way and that, and quickly
making plans to cash in those extra sick days, me, I’m trying to figure
out how to best plan my staying up to watch the final strains of late
night news analysis, while still getting up early enough to wander the
grounds trying to catch a glimpse of my favorite stars on Team W!
There’s also a slim chance that a friend of Jens, a bonified member of
the GOP might get me close enough to catch a whiff of some real live
neo-con party action [OK, a real outside chance…]
Yep, giddy as a school girl… It’s going to be an interesting week
indeed. I have every confidence that this city can pull it off. The
combatants are already appearing on the field, the professional
protestors have already started flying in, the cops already have many
of the barricades in place. The battle for Central Park is in 11th hour
negotiations and the whining and chest pumping is being played out on
queue… We’re all expecting something on the level of Ali lighting the
torch in Atlanta happening hear on day one… who knows maybe they’ll
bring a cheque to top up all that missing homeland security funding the
city needs! Now wouldn’t that be sumptin!
I will try to keep you posted.
If you want to know a little bit more about Mackerel, one good place to look is Cory Doctorow’s article on its demise, titled Burying the Fish. It was submitted to Wired, but got cut.
For those of you who will be in the vicinty of Accordion City this evening, my BodyPump
class (bench presses to Alien Ant Farm, shoulder lifts to MC Hammer,
sit-ups and push-ups to AC/DC) will be having a “BodyPump night out”
tonight at 7:00 p.m. at Tortilla Flats (Queen Street, just east of Spadina) after today’s workout.
Why am I announcing this? Because:
Photos tomorrow.
In lieu of the server-hogging “Screaming Doom Boys” video (a whopping 8MB file downloaded by a lot of people), I present to you: a teeny MP3 file (150K) featuring Master Thespian William Shatner not taking any guff from the director on the Star Trek set.
Here’s a single frame from the “at the desk” sequence of my CTV interview from a couple of days ago, annotated. It tells a lot:
Yesterday morning, David Akin in his CTV News guise (he’s also with the Globe and Mail) asked if he could drop by Tucows along with intrepid camerman Lucien and interview both Boss Ross and me about Google as part of a piece on their IPO. We said “come on down!” and an hour later, he was here conducting interviews.
Here’s Boss Ross in his office.
And
here I am. While “Technical Community Development Coordinator” is my
actual title, it’s just too hard to explain and wouldn’t fit on the
screen anyway.
“Carpenters need hammers, internet guys need Google.” Hah! I slay me! I am the Soundbite King!
Ross has posted the video in his latest entry — you can either get the video there or download it from me [1.9 MB Windows Media]. Take your pick!